Roll The Dice
by Lvra
Summary: And hope you don't get snake eyes. (OC-SI)
1. Happy Birthday

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When I imagined my heroic debut, I had something a bit more... heroic... in mind.

"Halt, evildoer!" I shout, making sure to sound as Silver Agey as I possibly can. I only hope that my half-balaclava mask is dark enough to hide my radiant blush. "Cease your villainous actions at once, or you will be stopped by the Lucky Hero, Black Cat!"

The guy in a hoodie- the nefarious villain pulls his smoking fist out of the ATM machine he just shoved it in, a stream of yen spilling out of the sparking hole. "It's just a kid..." He turns towards me slightly, but his own, much nicer-looking mask hides his identity from my yellow eyes. Foiled! "Scram, brat. You're out past your bedtime."

"It's never too late to be dispensing justice!"

Despite my killer line, he doesn't look all that impressed. "I'm not going to default on my credit card because some Cheshire-looking motherfucker wanted to cosplay at two o' clock in the morning. I won't be warning you again, kid. Go home to your parents and leave the heroism to the professionals."

"Gasp!" I carefully enunciate, throwing my head back in the way I know will make the fake cat ears on my headband look like they're twitching. Just like I practiced! "How did you know Miss Cheshire was my inspiration!? Does your Quirk allow you to read minds, nya?!"

His hands are literally spinning on their wrists, like automatic screwdrivers. "I don't have time for this..." he murmurs, and then the rest of him starts rapidly rotating, too. A breeze kicks up in front of the corner store, scattering yen around like leaves in the wind. My cat's eyes catch his knees bending, and he looks ready to pounce.

Considering how heavily ATMs are reinforced in a world of superhumans, and that he casually punctured one with a single hand, that much force at that fast a velocity will probably fucking maim me. Either he's more desperate than he sounds, he's both stupid and callous, or he thinks I'm either more experienced than I am or hiding a truly impressive Quirk. It's the last one, but there's no way he could know for sure.

I resent his immediate jump to lethality. Doesn't he know the proper rules of engagement between a hero and a villain begins with gratuitous monologuing, escalates to some light martial arts and bantering, and only climaxes with the full force of our respective Quirks? This is one of those assholes who skips to the end of a novel, isn't he?

I hate people like that. "Behold! The might of the Lucky Hero, Black-"

He blurs, and a human twister tears across the concrete, keening like a missile and then exploding like one. Shards of brick and earth burst, all the nearby windows shattering from the percussive force of his initial assault. The villain himself skids and tumbles across the ground for several meters until a spinning knife-hand embeds itself in the concrete and he pulls himself to a halt, leaving black scuff marks in his wake.

I, having only a heartbeat to prepare for his attack, consumed all of my stored good luck in a single instant. I then immediately tripped over thin air halfway through transitioning into my Heroic Pose #4. Luckily – as was the entire point – my fall contorted my body just so that I narrowly avoided being pulped by his lunge, and my free hand, having reached out instinctively for something to latch on to, snagged the cloth of his face mask.

When the ATM thief – I decide to call him Corkscrew – when Corkscrew sees it in my hand, his own jumps up to his freshly-bared face. He growls, surprisingly pretty features twisted in an enraged scowl. "I warned you, kid," he tells me, emitting a sharp whirring noise as his fingers start revolving in their sockets. "Now that you've seen my face, I'll have to kill you."

"Nya~" I say, reflexively being sarcastic to hide my sudden fear as I stumble back to a stable stance as gracefully as I can manage. It's not very graceful at all, but that's half my gig. When the villain just growls deeper, though, I start to wonder if I should have chosen a different gig.

I mean – what the fuck, right? As if his last attack wasn't already going to put me in the hospital, now he wants to make it a morgue? That's fucked up, right? I'm a twelve year old girl- thirteen, now, I suppose. You can't just kill kids like that. What the fuck is the matter with this guy? Now I absolutely have to put him behind bars. What a drag.

"You were supposed to shout the name of your attack first, you know?" I try to sound confident. I don't know how successful I am. "Don't tell me you're one of those losers who don't name their attacks. That's not a very cool trait in a nemesis."

Corkscrew grits his teeth, bending his knees in the exact same way he did last time. He's going to pounce again, and I don't have any good luck left to protect myself with.

Thank God that good luck was never really my thing. I snap my hand at him, throwing an immense ball of eerie violet light through the torn concrete by his boots, and then immediately dive for cover.

Just as Corkscrew's feet leave the ground, the street erupts, an actual plume of flame bursting from the fissure and eating its way towards the sky. Corkscrew howls, agony clear in his voice when his body breaks itself on the closest building, as if haphazardly flung by a petulant god. Concrete propulsed skyward by the explosion then falls to the earth like a meteor shower in miniature, landing to a sound like gunfire.

I, not being an idiot, took refuge under a dumpster in the nearest alley. I wasn't even scratched! It seems I'm pretty good at this hero thing. Well, of course I am! After all, I'm the Lucky Hero, Black Cat! I take a moment to preen, and to catch my breath because holy fuck, I didn't think the explosion would be so big. I easily could've died there, God damn. I'm shaking, why am I shaking? I exhale, counting to three, and break out into a fit of hysterical laughter halfway there.

My moment is destroyed when a powerful hand clutches my ankle and drags me out into the world. I kick and struggle on reflex, but there's not enough space under the dumpster for me to mime a throwing motion at my assailant and I'm not about to imbue myself with bad luck to get out of a sticky situation. I'd channel my Quirk through my ankle and into this foul villain's hands, but I don't actually know how to do that.

"Naughty kitty, scratching at a hero~" the owner of the hand purrs, and I freeze. The voice – it's so familiar. "It's going to take me forever to teach you manners. Oh, I can't wait!"

A dark mist then wafts directly into my face, and I heroically pass out.

.

…

.

When I wake up, the blindfold over my eyes is soft but the cuff around my wrist is cold and hard. This must be the work of a truly despicable villain! I try to work myself up to a heroic mood, but the cuff chafes against my delicate skin, feeling somehow more real than the spinning hands of the villain I defeated, and it's hard to draw on that familiar optimism.

"Good morning, my sweet sidekick~" a feminine voice coos, and I feel the fabric over my face being lifted off of me. I open my slit, amber eyes, and the first thing I see is the blindfold – but it's not a blindfold at all, it's a sleep mask, like the one Momma used to wear. The room is still too dark to be comfortable, but my cat's eyes aren't just for show. "Sweet dreams, I hope?"

"...You're Miss Midnight," I say instead, voice awed, taking in the sight of one of the three heroes to have their picture taped to my wall. Her mane of dark hair is as iconic as her skimpy leotard! I've lost track of all the times the matron has confiscated my pictures of her. The only sound I can make for several long seconds is a delighted squeal. "Oh my God! Oh my God! Can I have your autograph? Please! I've been good, I totally deserve it! Please, please, please please please-"

She taps her elegant cheekbone, face scrunched in a moue of confusion. "Have you been good, though?" she asks, and I fall awkwardly silent. "Last I saw, you exploded a storefront, and a street, and several windows, and that poor, innocent villain-"

"Lies and slander! That gas main exploded on its own!" The excuses are basically a reflex, by this point. "Gas leaks happen all the time! You have no proof!"

She smiles more catlike than I've ever managed. "I don't remember mentioning a gas main, though?"

"U-um..." I look to the side shiftily.

"It's all well and good to capture a dangerous villain, Manami," Miss Midnight says, suddenly sounding less playful and more serious. She meets my eyes, and I can't tear them away. "But the repairs for the collateral damage you caused in a single minute vastly exceeded the amount of yen he stole throughout his entire life. More importantly, he's never hurt anyone before, and though he was the one to escalate the situation, it was your explosion that very nearly could have caught innocent bystanders in the crossfire. If it weren't for eyewitnesses claiming he jumped straight from dialogue to murder and your own youth, you could be in serious trouble, right now."

I finally break away from her steely gaze, tears burning in my eyes. There's a part of me that wants to get furious and defend my actions, but considering those pointed words come from a personal idol of mine, I just can't. She's right; people gather to watch heroes and villains duke it out all the time, and I didn't think to check for any before I detonated the gas main. I hadn't even noticed the eyewitnesses she claimed stood up for me. If I had gotten one of them hurt with my dumbass recklessness... I don't think I could have ever forgiven myself.

"However... you did have the best of intentions, and you were prepared enough to capture a dangerous villain without being harmed yourself. That's a tremendous accomplishment." She smiles at me, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. "You've been let off without so much as a black mark on your record, on the stipulation that you never attempt hero work alone again. Okay? Okay. Okay? Okay!"

She pats my thigh, then gets up and lazily walks out of the room. I stare after her in bewildered amazement.

Then I realize that she didn't uncuff me. Why the fuck did she cuff me in the first place? Did she think it would be funny?! It's not!

"M- Miss Midnight! Wait, come back!"

.

…

.

It takes me three years – more like three minutes, but it feels like three years – to realize I can just pump bad luck into the handcuffs. Then, it's a matter of shaking it until it pops open. Not for the first time, I realize that my powers would make me an amazing villain. Japan should be so grateful I all-but ooze moral fiber!

At least, that's the kind of thought I want bouncing around my skull right now. The actual thoughts I can't seem to help but have are of a much darker, and more sobering, nature. They're the kind of thoughts I've devoted my entire life to ridding myself of, through the power of overwhelming cheeriness and atonement... and I will atone, even if the nature of my Quirk would make returning to the life of sin I once lived so sickeningly easy.

I'm not religious, but I pray every night before bed. I don't ask for anything, not even the basic health and safety that my mother used to pray for, because I don't really deserve it. No, my prayers are little more than whispered thanks, words that fail to convey the enormity of the gratitude I feel for whatever being gave me this second chance.

That's what this is, of course. This second life. My second chance. How could it not be? The only difference between this world and my last is that shining baby, and all the heroes and villains that came in its wake. Good and Evil are so much easier to discern, in this world.

Time and time again, I was offered opportunities to return to that life of endlessly chasing money, sex, and blood. With this Quirk, it would be so easy; with the power to give all of my competitors a little bad luck, I would dominate the underground. But... I can't.

Back then, I was a wealthy inheritor of a family fortune. I immediately squandered it. I was a human who had a little taste of the devil's sin, and dear God, I wanted more... so I sought it, and I found it. I reveled in it. I took loans to pay off loans, and took even more to pay off those. I danced from sin to sin until I reached the end of the line, and my debtors choked me to death with it.

Shot my mother, shot my father, shot my brother, shot my cat, shot my neighbors and shot my fiance-

They needed hostages. They thought I still had money to give them, thought I just needed a little push. But there wasn't any money left. I'd spent it all, on sex and drink and lottery tickets. I made my own bad luck, ruined my own family. I ruined my world.

And then I was given another. Another world, another chance.

I wasn't given another family. It hurts, but I can't say I'm surprised. I don't deserve another family; not then, not now, maybe not ever. I brought ruin and death to my last one. God couldn't trust me with another, shouldn't trust me with another. He gave me this Quirk, this dreadful ability to spread bad luck wherever I go, as a constant reminder of my sins, my failures. I understand.

That's why I chose the name I did. Manami. It means 'beautiful love.' A constant reminder that I can do better than Mary ever did. I can be better. I can spread love and kindness the way I will forever spread bad luck. That's why I chose to be a hero; what better way would there be to atone? And... why would I be reborn here, in a world distinguished from my last by its heroes and villains, than to be part of that eternal war between the good and the evil within every person's heart? If I was meant to atone by being a doctor or a police officer, I wouldn't have been reborn in a world of actual heroes.

I can't tell Miss Midnight any of this. As far as this world is concerned, I'm just a thirteen-year-old girl with an unfortunate Quirk and the eyes of an unlucky black cat. That's the way it has to be. I couldn't bear the shame of admitting all of my failures, especially not to one of my personal heroes.

And- who knows? It might even be true. I have the soul of a twenty-four-year-old sinner, yes, but this mind and this heart are that of a young child. I remember being this age, once upon a time, and I know that the way I act now is not the way I acted as an adult, even before I inherited my fortune and swan-dived off the cliff of reason and good judgment. I am, for all intents and purposes, a young girl...

...but I'm a young girl with karma so steeped in black, I can literally throw sickly-purple waves of bad luck at things to make them catastrophically fail. I have a lot of work to do.

I sigh. That work will begin with speaking to Miss Midnight and begging her to take me on. I'm not dim; the way she spoke of teaching me last night and the way she called me her sidekick this morning, I know that she's already planning on it. I can't, won't, take that for granted, though. I... I need to communicate to her, clearly and maturely, exactly how much I need her tutelage. I could have killed someone last night; if those eyewitnesses had been close enough to the gas main, I would have. I am... leagues out of my depth, but I don't have it in me to keep putting off hero work.

I only started remembering my past life when I turned seven, and it only really fleshed itself out when I was a little over ten, but I'm thirteen now and I couldn't wait another day. I just... don't have that kind of patience in me. I know the path to atonement will be a long road, but that's all the more reason to start walking it now. And, if I'm lucky... maybe there'll be a family at the end. Maybe I'll be worthy of one, at the end. I can hope.

What was it the Martian Manhunter said?

"The future is worth it. All the pain. All the tears. The future is worth the fight."

I pool good luck into the pillow under my head and throw it in a random direction. The switch is flipped with a muffled click, and a sparsely-furnished guest bedroom is illuminated with soft light.

"I am so cool," I say, just to put myself back in that cheery, thoughtlessly adorable state of mind. And, because – well, having superpowers is pretty rad. "Now, to convince the R-Rated Hero to accept a thirteen-year-old sidekick."

This might be difficult.

.

…

.

"Please accept me as your sidekick!" Running heedlessly into the living room of Miss Midnight's home, I immediately prostrate myself before her. "I will do all of your chores!"

"You're hired!" she says immediately.

Huh. That was easy.

"But first, we have some paperwork to fill out," she adds, and I can feel myself wilt. "Follow me to my office, okay, sweetie?"

I push myself up to a kneel, and Miss Midnight grabs my hand to pull me the rest of the way to my feet. Standing this close, she feels larger than life; part of it is that she's a solid nine inches taller than me, but the rest is her Aura of Heroism. Or maybe my little crush. I'm going to go with Aura of Heroism.

She looks just like in my pictures of her, which sounds creepy now that I've actually met her and slept in her guest bedroom. Her wild mane of ink-black hair, darker than my own violet-tinted strands, seems somehow more full pinned up in a loose bun. She's swapped out her infamous red mask for a casual pair of glasses, but the thin layer does little to dull the brilliance of her blue eyes. Most surprising, however, is that even in the privacy of her own home, she's not showing any skin; the hem of her vivid red turtleneck is pulled down to her thighs, and her black leggings are tucked into a pair of fluffy-looking slippers. With the sole exception of her hands and face, no part of her is exposed to the air.

I read a theory on CapeNet about her, once, that basically boiled down to 'Midnight's Quirk doesn't have an off switch.' Few people believed it, and I wasn't one of them. It's true that most Quirks are facets of their owner's biology, but I refused to believe that my favorite hero isn't able to stop emitting her sleepy-time gas. To have had such a Quirk since she turned four, and to be unable to turn it off... the thought is too depressing to consider. So I didn't consider it.

I'm very carefully not considering it now. I decide to look around her home instead, since she seems content to drag me to her office in silence and I'm not ashamed to admit to a little curiosity. I'm being given rare behind-the-scenes access to Miss Midnight's home! Who, when given such an amazing opportunity, would not pull back the curtain just a little bit?

Unfortunately, even with all the obsessive interest of a self-admitted fangirl, Miss Midnight's home just isn't that intriguing. It's... a home. It's a lot nicer than the church, and it might even be bigger – there are a lot of doors Miss Midnight is pulling me past – but I was once raised in a multi-million-dollar penthouse. This just looks like she bought three middle-class apartments all in a row, knocked down some walls, built a few more, and painted it all varying shades of red and violet. It actually looks, kind of... bare. Either she doesn't spend much time here, doesn't care to decorate, or she took most of it down when a minor crashed in a guest bedroom. Honestly, it could be any of the three.

"Smile for your thoughts?" Miss Midnight asks, and when I blink up at her in confusion, she blesses me with a radiant smile. I try not to swoon. I fail. "Talk to me, please? That's what I'm here for." She bumps my hip. "What do you have going on in that pretty little head of yours?"

I sigh exaggeratedly, resting the back of the hand she's not holding against my flushed cheek. "Miss Midnight thinks my head is pretty..."

She laughs. "I'll take it- and here we are."

Beyond the door marked NOT A DUNGEON is a simple wooden desk, a fancy-looking office chair, a large flat-screen television on one side and a wall of windows on the other. We must be at least ten floors up, but I can just barely see the alley I blew up through the glass, now surrounded by construction workers. Jeez. No wonder she was the first hero on the scene. I'd blame the improbability of Corkscrew's little scheme literally taking place outside my idol's apartment, but I'd verified that my luck manipulation doesn't work on outside factors like that... but I had been blessing myself with good luck while I was searching for a crime to stop- oh my God my Quirk led me to Miss Midnight. I try not to squeal in joy.

"What are you smiling about this time?" she asks me, seeing me make goofy faces at random walls again. I'd flush in embarrassment if I wasn't already burning up.

"I'm so lucky~" I breathe, and the explanation escapes my lips in a torrent. "While I was running around looking to make my debut, I was using up some of my good luck so I could actually, you know, accomplish something, right? My Quirk works by drastically spiking the odds of singular, low-probability events, and I was focusing on finding a crime to stop that would help me become a worthy hero. And it bee-lined me straight to the ATM guy being all villainy outside of your apartment! I totally lucked out! I mean, that was kind of the point and all, but-"

Miss Midnight silences me by way of pats to the head. "That's impressive," she says, and there's a note of honesty to her voice that makes me smile. "Don't tell anyone about your Quirk. Ever. Okay, sweetheart?"

"What- um?" The smile falls off my face, but I nod. My Quirk could be fucking dangerous in a determined villain's hands, as I was just thinking about earlier. A lot of people would try to use and abuse it. Hell, I would have, in my past life. "Yeah, I... I get it. You knew my name, so you had to look me up on the Registry, right? So you saw that my Quirk is just listed as 'Bad Luck.' I never told anybody more about it. Well... except for you, just now, but that's okay, right?"

"Yes." She smiles, and walks over behind the desk to sit down in her soft-looking chair. She gestures for me to sit on the desk itself and, awkwardly, I do. Perks to being tiny, I guess; I'm just shy of five foot. "Now... how does it work, exactly?"

I blink. "I don't... really know what words to use? It's like a sixth sense, y' know? I have these two batteries inside of me, and the little one very slowly fills with good luck, while the big one recharges really fast with bad luck. It takes about a week to fill the good luck battery, and about a day to fill the bad luck battery. If both of them run out, my luck turns sour and I'll trip down a flight of stairs or something, and the same thing happens if I lose control of a hex – that's, um, that's what I call it when I throw bad luck at something. If they're full, I lose control of my Quirk and start firing off whatever luck I have too much of at random. I've only let that happen a few times, and it's always been bizarre."

"Sounds interesting," she muses, before lazily pointing a finger at me. "No bad luck inside Siren Place, alright? I don't need a wire to snap or a termite to get in or something. That's just good manners."

I raise my hands a little defensively. "It's a bit more controlled than that... I get to choose what odds I want to spike. Not the how, but the what. I have no idea how that gas main exploded... but I did decide that it would explode."

"Still." She puffs out her cheeks a little bit, and starts pulling paperwork out of a drawer. "We're not the only ones who live here, it's only right to show a little common courtesy."

"I'm moving in?" I say, cat's eyes widening. Then they dilate. "Other people live here?"

She waves a hand around the room lazily. "You don't think I have all this space just for myself, do you? I split rent with a few other teachers at U.A. It's only logical."

"It's only logical," I echo, a little numb.

"And of course you're moving in! What kind of hero would I be, if I let my sidekick live in a box out on the streets when I have four guest bedrooms going criminally unslept in?"

"I don't live in a box-"

"Well, not anymore. I just gave you a bedroom. Keep up, Manami." She clicks her tongue at me, and slides a pen and a small mountain of her paperwork across the desk.

After scrawling my stylized (read: barely legible) kanji for Manami three times across as many pages, I still and frown at it. "What am I signing?"

"The adoption papers, of course."

.

…

.

"Manami?" Miss Midnight's voice drips with concern. "Are you alright, sweetheart?"

"You're adopting me," I state. Can she hear the full impact of the disbelief I'm feeling? I somehow doubt it. "Me. You. Adopting."

"That's what I just said, yes," she affirms.

"Why?"

Her hands clasp over mine. I hadn't realized that they had become fists. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Why the fuck would you?" I tear my hands away, but my cowardly eyes burn a hole in the floor. I don't know when I jumped off of the desk. "You just met me last night. You took me in, made me your sidekick, and now you're adopting me? I- please, tell me why. I don't understand."

She takes a long moment to respond. "Do you know why I became a hero, Manami?"

"I-" I reel at the apparent non-sequitur, but I respect her too much to snap at her. "No, I don't. I've watched all your interviews, but you always deflect."

"That's because I'm ashamed of the answer," she says bluntly, and I swallow. "I didn't become a hero to stop villains or inspire hope or help people. I became a hero because I saw that heroes were respected, that they were admired, and I'd spent all my life being shunned because of my indiscriminate, uncontrollable Quirk, and I wanted that. I wanted that more than anything. So I put on a skintight bodysuit and a little red mask, and I walked out of my apartment at two o' clock in the morning, and I knocked out the first group of suspicious characters I saw with my Somna. They were just homeless people, they weren't hurting anybody, but Manami, tell me, do you know the thrill I felt?"

Yes. I want to say it, but the word catches in my throat and it makes me feel sick.

"Eventually, I got better at it," she continues in that same calm, infuriating tone of voice, as she tears all my starry-eyed misconceptions of her to shreds. "Eventually, a teacher at U.A., an actual hero, found me not making a complete fool of myself, and he offered me a recommendation. He doctored my records, made me fifteen instead of seventeen, and the next thing I know I'm dressed in a fancy uniform and going to school, looking to actually make something of myself. It took me another seven years and losing a fight to Shouta to finally get it through my thick head that, yes, being a hero isn't about the hero, it's about all the people we help, but I made it there eventually."

My palms are slick with blood. My nails... I didn't even notice. "What are you getting at, Miss Midnight?"

"None of that 'Miss' bullshit," she says. "My name is Nemuri."

"Miss Nemuri," I try.

"Good enough." She snorts. It's the most inelegant thing I've seen her do. "What I'm getting at, is that I was on the rooftop of this very building when I saw that villain stick his hand in the ATM."

My mouth makes a perfect 'O.' The actual sound doesn't escape my lips.

"I was about to interfere, when I saw you. You were just this scrawny kid, couldn't be older than twelve, and you were spitting out all these terrible lines like you just stepped off the pages of a comic book. I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought you were insane. I almost stepped in then."

"Why... why didn't you?"

"I was curious," she admits without shame. "Can you blame me? I had to know: were you really so blind that you didn't recognize the danger you were in, or was it all part of a master plan to infuriate him into making a mistake? And then he lunged at you, and I saw the fear in your eyes, and I was sure it was the former. I didn't step in then because I wanted to watch you get roughed up a little; I can be that kind of nasty person, sometimes. Then you popped off another quip, and I realized I was wrong; it was option three. You were honestly buying what you were selling."

"I thought it would be funny," I interject weakly.

"You're the kind of person who is in the hero gig not for the money or the power or to have your name strewn in shining lights," she goes on, ignoring me. "You're in it because you want to help people. This little girl, seeing what I couldn't see when I was twice her age. I knew I wanted you as a sidekick long before you made that street explode."

You're wrong. My desire to be a hero is entirely selfish. "And... and the adoption?"

"I researched you while you slept, of course. I had to know what I was dealing with. And, every word I read... it reminded me of myself, and I knew I had so much to teach you, and you me. It's what the hero thing is all about, sweetheart. It wasn't a matter of 'should I do this?' and 'but what if I do that?' My heart made the decision before my mind first realized the possibility. I've learned long ago not to argue when my heart runs off and does things like that."

Tears are streaming from my eyes. I don't... I haven't reached atonement yet. I haven't washed my soul clean, yet. I still produce... so much more bad karma than I do good. That's how my Quirk works; I realized it ages ago. When I've atoned, when I become worthy of things like family again, I'll be making so much more good luck than I will bad. I'm not... I'm not anywhere close, and some days it feels like I'll never make it.

"Will you sign it? Will you join my family, become Kayama Manami instead of just Manami?" Her voice, earlier so very calm, now seems impossibly fragile. I could shatter it with a word. "If you don't, I'll understand. You can still live here and you'll still be my sidekick, but I think-"

"Miss Nemuri, I, I'm so grateful, really I am, but I-" refuse, I want to say, need to say, but the word catches in my throat. I try to spit it out, the world's ugliest hairball, but I can't. I just can't.

Because I want this. I want this so bad. This, this moment, is what I had dedicated my entire life to earning. Family. I thought it would come at the end of a long, painful road, full of selfless good deeds and slow atonement, but it's here, a bare handful of hours after the very first time I snuck out of my window at half past midnight to beat up criminals. And, I – I feel like I haven't earned it yet, feel like I don't deserve it yet.

Is this a test from God? To see if I'll back out of my chosen path at the very first opportunity? But, no, it can't be; if it was, she wouldn't have asked me to be her sidekick before asking me to be her daughter. There wouldn't be this implicit assumption that she would teach me to be a hero. If this was to tempt me away from my quest for atonement, Miss Nemuri would be a lawyer or a baker or a florist, or literally anything except for one of the most famous and well-respected heroes in the nation.

Unless that's the catch. I've thought a lot about how hard it would be to wash my soul clean, but never once did I think I would be given help, given guidance. Does God expect me to do this alone? If He does, then I need to turn Miss Nemuri down and go back to that lonely orphanage, and do this alone. She told me that I'm forbidden by the local law enforcement to do hero work alone, though, and if that isn't a clear-cut sign from God that I should get a partner, than I don't know what is.

Or... or, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. I may have used my Quirk, but I just don't believe that I could be so insanely lucky as to be asked to be adopted by someone like Miss Nemuri, regardless of her sadism and less-than-stellar past; that actually makes me more able to empathize with her, not less. This has to be the work of God. There's no other explanation.

I thought a family would be waiting for me at the end of the road, but it looks like they're spread out all across it. I took the first step, and found Miss Nemuri. I found a mother. She may not be mine now, legal papers aside, but the potential is there.

Now, I have something to lose. The thought makes me shiver.

"I understand-"

I swallow. "You don't. I... I would love to join your family. I'm just not sure I'm worth it."

"Stupid girl," she says, and my eyes jerk up to hers in surprise and hurt – and she musses my dark violet hair, a fond but slightly sad smile twisting her lips. "Everyone is worthy of love, of being saved by a hero. That's what it means to be human. Okay? So stop looking so pathetic, put on a smile, and let's go eat pancakes. The paperwork can wait a few hours."

"Pancakes," I drawl, and for the first time in years I let my American accent thicken the word, the dark culture of my first home dripping from my tongue like acid. I hiccup, and laugh – though whether it's at the sound or my newly adoptive mother's kindness, I have no idea. "Pancakes sound good."

.

…

.

So we ditch the paperwork and go across the street to an American cafe, and Miss Nemuri talks shit about her colleagues for an hour while I help her plan creative pranks that are sure to annoy or embarrass them. More than a few feature random yet precise spikes of bad luck, which obviously can't be traced back to us, because we'd have rock-solid alibis.

Not once did she mention my obvious inadequacy issues, which I'm thankful for. In fact, she doesn't mention the adoption at all. I'm grateful for this. For a woman famous for her talent to get under people's skins and push their buttons, she's – perhaps unsurprisingly – rather tactful when she wants to be. She knows that family is a bit of a sore subject for me, so she lets me get used to the idea before bringing it up again. This lets me freak out about signing adoption papers in relative peace, and quietly scream at myself for tearing apart the script and not remaining a sad little orphan.

But I am so, so glad I did. I feel better; I feel lighter, somehow. Before I was Atlas, holding on my shoulders the weight of the sky; now I have someone in my corner, and it doesn't feel so heavy.

Miss Nemuri is talking, weaving some story about U.A. again. She tells a lot of stories, I've discovered, and almost all of them are set in U.A. It's clear in the fond twist to her voice that she really, genuinely cares about the place, and for a moment between heartbeats all I want to do is reach a hand into her brain and change her everything so that she'll talk about me in the same way. I bury the desire immediately. She may have given me a sense of family that I really don't deserve, and I'll always love her for that, but there's no need to try and make that feeling mutual – if she ever looks at me with more than mild affection in her brilliant blue eyes, I think I'll run away. I don't think there's any other way I'd know how to respond.

"You really like working there, don't you?" I ask when she slows down. I like listening to her talk, even if I don't recognize any of the names she says and don't understand any of the implied backstory that she doesn't. "Is it just the people, or...?"

She hums, tapping the back of a chopstick to her cheek. "U.A. turned my life around, sweetheart," she eventually explains. "The people are what's really important, of course, but it's useless to deny that almost all of my most precious memories took place there. It's where I met my closest friends, and it's where I continue to find fulfillment even now."

I cock my head. "You live there, don't you? The apartment is just for when school's not in session."

"Aah." She smiles. "We teachers have dorms there, you see. At first, it was just convenient – but it eventually became home. Maybe it always was."

A little worry seeps into my expression. She interprets it long before I have the opportunity to shove it back into its little box in my mind.

"I won't leave you in Siren Place all alone, Manami," she says. "Actually, I was wondering... I may have snuck a look at your grades, and you're quite the little over-achiever, aren't you? Maybe you should think about attending U.A., next semester."

I blink at her. "...By next semester, you mean, what, in five weeks?"

"What?" Her smile turns a bit sly. "Can't you do it?"

"I have to skip another grade and qualify for the most prestigious hero school in the country... in five weeks."

"You've skipped one before and still maintain an A-average. What's the problem? Are you saying... you can't do it?"

I take a moment to think about it. In my past life, I was a medical student at the University of Chicago and heiress to a family fortune that's been building for the greater part of a hundred years – so, yes, I used that little leg-up to skip past second grade. In my defense, it was really, really boring.

She is wildly overestimating my educational capacity, though. To be fair, it's only logical to assume someone who skipped a grade, maintained straight A's, and moonlighted as a vigilante would have a truly impressive capacity for learning, and thus would be able to stomp all over baseline tests meant to examine the lowest common denominator of fifteen-year-olds. There are a few things Miss Nemuri is failing to take into account, though, through no fault of her own.

For one, this is Japan and not America, and for two, this isn't even the same planet as the one I was originally educated in. A lot of the science I learned growing up the last time around has been updated as new discoveries and technological innovations rewrite our understanding of reality. Even more starkly, the history I was raised with and the one I'm being tested on have a lot of weird little inconsistencies, as it turns out the shining baby isn't the divergence point, just the most obvious difference; that's not even going into all the ways heroes and villains have changed society since then. Even if that wasn't the case, it's not like I learned a lot of Japanese history in my Illinois social studies classes. The further into the educational system I go, the less of an advantage I have.

Then there's the fact that all of the tests are, you know, in Japanese.

Japanese is hard, man.

If it weren't for me basically auto-passing most of mathematics, English, and huge swathes of random other classes that happen to align with early 2000s America's, I just... wouldn't be able to do this. I will still have to dedicate almost the entirety of the five weeks before the Entrance Exams obsessively smashing my head against my textbooks until I, I don't know, passively absorb its knowledge through psychic osmosis or something. That's a thing, right? I'm sure it's a thing.

Miss Nemuri quirks an eyebrow, and I sniff haughtily. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if I think I can do it or not. What matters is that Miss Nemuri wants this to happen, and if she wants the moon, I'll build a rocket and get it for her.

"Of course I can do it."

.

…

.

I pass by the skin of my teeth.

…

…

…

 _A few things_.

 _This story is rated T for graphic language, canon-typical violence, and Manami's tragic fucking backstory. There will be no explicit sex and it is very, very unlikely that Manami's romantic development will ever advance past the 'puppy love' stage, because she's only thirteen god dammit._

 _That's also half the premise – the idea behind this story can basically be summed up as, "What if the SI didn't reincarnate with their mental maturity and development, but still got all the sad memories?" In other words, Manami is indeed a thirteen-year-old girl, but one traumatized by the memories of her past life all throughout her formative years. This is why she can be so calculating and curse like a sailor one moment, then ramble on about heroes and pancakes and kittens the next. She's a thirteen-year-old who thinks she's a twenty-four-year-old criminal sex trafficker. Throw in some malformed ideas about God, and you get one fucked up little girl._

 _And, no, Midnight doesn't love her. Maybe one day, but that's a long way off._

 _Lastly, because I don't care to rehash the source material in my fan stories, you can consider all of the stations of canon thrown out the window. Manami never read HeroAca, because HeroAca never existed. Next chapter is the Entrance Exams, and you'll see that it's almost entirely different. A lot of story arcs will be completely re-imagined like that – recognizable on the surface, but otherwise completely new. I think it's more fun, that way._

 _Oh- one last thing. This story will be almost entirely romanized. 'Sama' and 'san' is replaced by 'Miss,' 'Yuuei' by 'U.A.,' etc. A few things will stick because I feel it loses something in translation, like putting family names before given names, but I think that including honorifics will detract from the story and I've always placed importance on consistency in things like this._


	2. Mock Heroism

.

The Exam Orientation is about to begin and I'm kneeling in an empty classroom, trying not to have a panic attack.

"This... this is it. This is it." My hands are clasped over my face, all but trembling with the force of my own anxiety. In eerie contrast, my voice is calm and controlled. "U.A. High. I made it. I'm here. I just... The hard part's done, now I just need to score in the top forty or I'll get fucking shunted into General Studies, if I pass at all. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy."

When Miss Nemuri casually told me that U.A. only has two classes per year in the Hero Course, and that each class is hard-capped at twenty members, I had naturally freaked out. Of course, me being me, I did everything I could to bury this panic and instead be the very best student I could be. Rationally... in my head, I know that Miss Nemuri isn't going to abandon me in a ditch somewhere if I disappoint her, but my heart isn't so easily persuaded. I've spent the past five weeks looking over my shoulder at her, expecting her to shout "Surprise!" at any moment because, really, who would adopt _me?_

There's a distressingly large part of me that thinks that, if I fail these Entrance Exams, I'll return to Siren Place in tears only to find that my keys don't fit the new lock. I'm trying to bury that fear inside of me. I'm failing.

My phone – shiny, new, and a gift from Miss Nemuri – beeps at me, sounding just like R2-D2 from the original Star Wars. I jump in fright as the sound breaks my gloomy silence, then laugh at myself. It comes out a bit shaky and weak, but it's still a laugh.

"Okay..." I breathe, and silence the alarm. Orientation is in five minutes. "Okay, I can do this. I can fucking do this."

I stumble to my feet and shake out the stiffness in my legs. I even shadowbox a little, because I'm going to be a hero and shadowboxing is just a thing heroes do. It makes me feel a little better, at least. I'm going to be a hero, and I'm going to help people, and I'm going to make Miss Nemuri proud.

I then twist the door handle and immediately smack somebody in the face with thirty pounds of lacquered wood.

"Oh my God I'm so sorry!" I shout, hurrying around my accidental weapon to grab my fallen victim by the shoulders and shake him a little bit. "Are you okay?! Can you hear me? Quick, tell me how many fingers I'm holding up!" I stick my hand in his face. "Do I need to take you to see Recovery Girl? Her office is that-a-way, I think-"

"I'm fine," he says, long fingers gently prying mine out of his privacy bubble. I blink at him. "Thank you for your concern, but it is unnecess-"

"Are you sure? You're face is, all..." I make a vague circular motion with my hand.

He sighs. "This is just how I look."

We both stand there awkwardly, one girl with the eyes of a cat and one boy with the head of a raven. Like... an actual raven. His teeth seem human, but they're inside a bird's beak and below slanted, crimson eyes. He has hair... kind of. They're not _feathers,_ but it doesn't look like actual hair, it's just a black, kinda spiky... mass. It's bizarre. Cute, but bizarre. I mean, I've seen people with Mutant-type Quirks before, I'm even one of them, but...

"I... should go," he says, and carefully sidesteps me. "It was... interesting, to meet you."

Considering the way he's headed... "Are you headed to the Hero Course Orientation?" I have to jog to keep up with the taller boy. He doesn't slow down. "Me too! I'm so excited! Aren't you? I mean, of course you are, this is _U.A.,_ but I'm actually here! Oh my God! I never thought this day would come, but it finally has! I'm kinda nervous though, do you know what the practicals are? I hope I do good. Hey, we might even be in the same class! How sweet would that be?"

He doesn't respond, just sighs, adjusts the sleeves of his gray button-up uniform, and follows the arrows on the floor. If I didn't know better, I would think he doesn't like me. I have to stifle the snicker that wants to escape.

"Hey! What kind of Quirk do you have? I'm sure it's really impressive! You look like the kind of guy to be packing some serious firepower under that aloof exterior. I watched a movie that was kinda like that once, everyone underestimated the lead guy because he didn't brag like the other soldiers did but when the aliens attacked, he was totally badass!" I ramble on for another five minutes, barely stopping to breathe. It's really impressive. I'm actually kind of proud of myself.

Raven-Guy, on the other hand, just sighs several more times and doesn't say a word – at least, until we reach the doors to Orientation and the knob refuses to turn. "We're late," he murmurs softly, but his fingers leave a thin impression in the metal. "I assume all the other doors are locked, as well."

Perfect! My master procrastination skills have given me a chance to showcase my usefulness. "Step aside, citizen, for I, the Lucky Hero Black Cat, am here to save the day!" I grab the other door's handle, subtly pump bad luck into the lock, and twist. The door opens with a satisfying _click._ "Success!"

Twenty students in matching black uniforms turn around at my crow of exultation and shush me in unison. I flinch and hide behind Raven-Guy, who just sighs again and calmly strides into the auditorium.

There's a table by the doors, a stack of fancy-looking fliers labeled _Hero Course Entrance Examination_ lying neatly in the center. Beneath the title is a list of directions to eight different locations, imaginatively named Battle Centers A through H, and absolutely nothing else. Didn't Miss Nemuri say the handouts would go over the testing criteria?

 _"...battle giant robots,"_ the Voice Hero, Present Mic screams with unreal volume. His words boom through the auditorium and, where we stand, echo several times. Raven-Guy winces, grabbing at his... ear-hole-thing. _"But that's gotten predictable! And you know what's not predictable? Heroism! We're doing something different this year, and we're not telling you what! Go to your Battle Center, wait for the clock to start... and be heroic!"_

In other words, because this year's theme is 'surprises,' orientation is utterly fucking useless. My lips purse, and it takes a conscious effort to relax my suddenly-stiff muscles. It's fine. Everyone is acting under the same lack of intelligence, so I'm not put at a disadvantage. If I can prove myself adaptable enough, I might even be able to make this a good thing. I need to remember: it's not about doing well, it's about doing better than everyone else. Like that old proverb about the angry momma bear and tripping your friend.

I tug at Raven-Guy's sleeve, and when he throws me a droll look, I see his Exam Ticket in his hand and plaster on an excited smile. "Hey, does that say Battle Center D? What luck! Mine does too!" I take mine out of my pocket and wave it at him; it does indeed say Battle Center D. Raven-Guy slowly closes his eyes. "We're going to be taking the test together! Isn't this great? It's like we're fated to be best friends! Hey, if we're going to be besties, then we should probably know more about each other, right? Ooh! I'll go first! My favorite color is purple- oh, I forgot! My name is Mana- uh, Kayama Manami. What's yours?"

"Tokoyami Fumikage," he says, gently grabbing the hand still waving my Exam Ticket around and lowering it. That's twice now, and twice is the start of a pattern. "How old are you, Miss Kayama?"

"You can just call me Mana, Mika!" If he despises his new nickname, he doesn't show it. Good enough! "I turned thirteen just last month!"

Miss Nemuri was the greatest present a girl could ask for. I preen, lost in happy memories. Mika, meanwhile, just stares at me in a similar thoughtful silence for a few moments. "If you are here, you must have passed the paper tests. You are quite accomplished for your age."

"Yep!" I beam at him. "You too, right? I mean, everyone else here looks really nervous, but you're cool as a cucumber. You're not worried at all, are you?"

The look he gives me then is starkly different than the exasperated, dismissive ones he's been shooting me since we met and I brained him with a door. It's the look of a man who realized the housecat that's been nuzzling his heel is actually a baby sabertooth tiger in disguise. It's a look of intense focus as known variables are recalculated and the solution no longer looks familiar.

I know what kind of image my personality is pushing. It's not an act – at least, not entirely – but someone doesn't have the experiences I do and come out unchanged. I no longer view life as a series of games to enjoy. I view it as a multi-decade poker match, and one I intend to win. And, in poker...

I've never read the Art of War, but I've seen enough YouTube videos explaining Sun Tzu's concepts to understand this one: _"Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak."_ I can't breathe fire or lift tanks or punch through solid steel. I can raise the odds of singular, low-probability events. I'm a wild card, not a front-line combatant. If this test is going to be anything like the last...

Well. Having the respect and affection of a capable fighter like my instincts are screaming Tokoyami Fumikage is can only be a good thing. I can't get that by looking _completely_ harmless, though it is my first instinct. Implying that I 'got in' to U.A. two years early, and was then able to detect his own unshakable calm and peg him as a capable fighter? That makes me interesting. He's thinking about me more seriously now, subconsciously giving me more respect. I can use that.

Present Mic finishes entertaining the crowd, but I don't think either Mika or myself were paying attention. We spy the signs on the wall pointing the way to the buses and slip out of the auditorium before the mass of hero wannabes can crush us underfoot. White walls and clean windows eventually give way to blue skies and grassy lawns. The buses are all in a line, clearly marked with giant posters placed over unfilled ad space. We're the first ones there.

"My Quirk is called Dark Shadow," Mika eventually says, breaking the thoughtful silence. Bingo. "It is... a semi-sentient creature partially out of phase with reality. It is very strong, very fast, and can fly."

I whistle, actually impressed. "That's pretty cool. Cooler than mine, anyway. I call it Bad Luck." Eerie violet light swirls around my raised hand. "It gives people and things bad luck."

His beak twitches. "Fitting name, then."

"Says the guy who named his dark shadow 'Dark Shadow.'"

He actually laughs. It's... not a bad sound at all.

.

…

.

The bus took a half hour to fill, and another hour to actually get to Battle Center D. For a test that's only supposed to take twenty minutes, that's ridiculous.

I sigh, plucking at the soft material that makes up my 'combat outfit' – basically just a jumpsuit done up in white and dark red. Miss Nemuri got it for me, my first week living with her; I've already mostly ruined it after all the times she knocked me into the dirt. I can only hope those basic holds she taught me will be enough to get me through the Exams. If not... well, I'm told a little luck can go a long way.

The thought makes me look out at the battleground, or what passes for one in U.A.'s eyes. If I didn't know better, I would think this was just another city, complete with a sprawling skyline and abandoned cars. The Hero Program's budget must be truly ludicrous if they have eight of these little gems just waiting to get trashed by some enterprising trainee heroes. How many of these buildings will still be standing after we smash them with laser beams or something? They have to have some kind of fast-repair Quirk on standby, there's no other explanation. Or do they just give Cementoss a blank check and go over it all with metallic spray-paint? I actually can't tell.

"Nervous?" Mika asks, tossing his gym bag on the pavement and walking over to me. I'm surprised by how unsurprised I am to see him dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie, looking as collected and aloof as ever.

I give him a closed-eye smile. "Just kinda want to get it over with, you know? I've never done anything like this before."

"I have, in training, but never on such a grand scale," he commiserates. He then looks up as the massive, wrought-iron gate opens, and the crowd of fifty-some students naturally gravitates towards it. "It will certainly be... an experience."

"Let's hope it's a good one, yeah?" I bump his hip with mine and jog ahead. He follows.

I do what I can to eyeball my competitors for threats as we pass through the gate and spill out into the limits of Battle Center D. None of them sets my instincts hissing like Mika does, but more than a few ping – the calm and the excited, mostly. The vast majority of our fifty-odd number seem either scared out of their minds, arrogant in their boredom, or just not threatening. I probably come off as the last to all of them, though, so I make sure not to be too quick in my flash judgments. That would just be embarrassing, getting burned like that.

The first to catch my eye is an angelic-looking girl with hair of literal vines. Though she shakes lightly with nerves, I saw a fierce determination in her eyes when she turned in my direction. It was only surpassed by the alien yellow-on-black eyes of the pink-skinned girl on her other side, and I stop to wonder if they're actually threats or if I'm just being racist towards those with Mutant-type Quirks. It's possible, I suppose. Hypocritical, but possible. In my defense, I'm from a world where normal people don't randomly give birth to mythical creatures.

I can't keep watching them for long, though, because all of the luck in my batteries starts swirling around energetically. A lot of low-probability events are going to happen, and soon. We're coming up on a shatterpoint – the crux of something important. I've only felt like this twice before. The first time was when I first manifested my Quirk. The second was on my birthday, when I snuck out of the window to go villain hunting.

"We need to go," I hiss to Mika, breaking off from the crowd at a dead sprint and dragging my raven-headed friend behind me by his sleeve. He trips, but to his credit finds his feet quickly. "Something's about to happen!"

All of the applicants close enough to hear me turn to look, and their eyes widen in unison-

-because Battle Center D explodes.

For a single, eternal moment, all I can hear is a sharp keening and all I can see is fire and light and shards of brick and metal. The buildings on either side – they were rigged, some asshole pushing the button when we ambled in between them like the mindless sheep we are. If I hadn't tapped into my reserves of good luck and bolted in a 'random' direction, which turned out to be between a girl who raised a wall of earth and a man with antenna who threw up an actual force-field, I would've been caught up in that. _We_ would've been caught up in that.

And the luck inside of me is still writhing. The shatterpoint – it hasn't happened yet.

 _"You have twenty minutes,"_ some asshole drawls through a megaphone. _"Time starts now."_

The luck in me stills.

Before the announcement, everyone had been unified, if only barely – the girl with the vines for hair had teamed up with force-field guy to mostly block off the explosion to our right, and those of us unlucky enough to be on the left-hand side of the street either got creative, like I did, or got skipped across the pavement like pebbles for their trouble. Some were able to save themselves, like a ram-looking girl who sunk into a pile of wool, or the red-haired boy who just stood there and took it and got off without a scratch, somehow, but even they were shaking in fear or shock.

Then an immense, green monster of a robot-tank with glowing red eyes erupts from the earth, and everyone scatters like headless fucking chickens.

This time, it's Mika who saves me – a winged shadow with piercing eyes bursts from the ground behind him, and he pulls me on top of it and flies us away from the crisis. The terrifying machine swings a fist heavier than Miss Nemuri's apartment at us and the shadowbeast dips low, the tips of its wings kicking up sparks on the pavement as we spin and curve out of the battlefield, but it can't pick up any altitude. We're too heavy for it; hell, just Mika might be too heavy for it. This can't go on.

The building in front of us then bursts into flame, and Mika's Dark Shadow screeches in agony and drops us to the ground like so much trash. I tuck and roll just like Miss Nemuri taught me mostly on reflex, and Mika pulls off a three-point hero landing beside me because of course he does, and I take a moment to just laugh in exultation at my survival. For a moment there, I really didn't think I would make it – thus is the nature of panic, I suppose. After the explosion, I was so stunned I couldn't do anything but be dragged along for the ride.

"We have still not been informed as to our purpose in this exam," Mika says, sounding stressed and more than a little aggrieved. "Do we escape? Do we destroy the machine? I do not know."

"Don't you remember what Present Mic said?" I pant, breathless. I don't have the focus needed to put as much sarcasm as I would like into the words. "Go to the Center, wait for the clock, bla bla bla... _and be heroic."_

 _"Help me, please! My daughter!"_

We turn to look at the burning building, where the feminine, but undeniably mechanical voice called for help in monotone. Mika gives the most put-upon sigh I have ever heard, and I just start laughing again.

Still, we both sprint into the fire like big damn heroes. Mika coats himself in a thin shell of his darkness and dives through a shattered window, his strangely weakened but still versatile Quirk protecting him from the broken glass if nothing else. I just lash out blindly with my arm, a sickly violet wave of malignant energies warping the wall's future enough that I can tear it as easily as rice paper.

When I get inside, I see Mika hefting the clothed but obviously plastic mannequin over his shoulder. When he sees me, he points up the burning staircase and I nod, choosing to trust that he's not screwing me over. I channel a little good luck, focus on not burning to death, and dash up the stairs.

I feel ridiculous when I leap out of the luck-warped window ten seconds later, swaddled baby in my arms, just as the building finally collapses behind me. If Miss Nemuri is watching me through a hidden camera right now, I will never be able to look her in the eyes again. The scene is just too cliché. The fake baby in my arms is even playing a looped soundtrack of wails and little baby screeches. It tugs at my heart, and I have to fight the instinct to coo at it.

Dark Shadow breaks my fall, looking timid and small but just as solid as it had been before. I nod at Mika in thanks and rush over to where he put down the fake mother. I put the pretend baby in its pretend mother's pretend arms and try not to feel even more ridiculous than I already do, but nothing stops the stupid little grin from pulling at my lips.

"Look," Mika interrupts me, and I turn to try and find what he's staring at. My yellow eyes widen.

All the buildings down the street, from out-of-place houses to corner shops to warehouses to who-knows-what, are all suffering from a random catastrophe. Some are on fire, some are flooding, one is falling into a sinkhole and another is even being slowly but surely demolished by a smaller, but still humongous robot. It's surreal. "Oh my God."

Mika sighs. "This is going to be exhausting."

"I'll take the ones on fire, you take the ones without ground access?"

"And rendezvous back here."

I'm already halfway towards the burning daycare. "Good luck!"

I splash the door with bad luck and tackle it down. The smoke bites at my eyes, and I choke. I don't have any fire protection gear, don't know any actual fire fighter techniques, and only have a rapidly-dwindling supply of good luck to protect myself with. My only hope is that Recovery Girl will heal my burns and lungs today. My only motivation is the fear of disappointing Miss Nemuri – my adoptive mother.

This is going to suck.

I hear a pre-recorded toddler's wail, and charge deeper into the building anyway.

.

…

.

For the first fifteen eternities, everything goes smoothly and I delude myself into thinking that this Exam, for all that it's made me charge into burning, flooding, and collapsing buildings to rescue very expensive mannequins, will actually end well. Then I meet another real person and everything goes to hell.

To be fair, it is both entirely my fault and completely avoidable, if only I wasn't such a shit human being.

The scenario began as thus: what I assumed to be a standard restaurant had no less than sixteen robotic mannequins inside of it, half of them childlike, no doubt set up to look like one of the kiddies was celebrating their birthday. In other words: jackpot. If the building wasn't collapsing like a house of cards, I would cheer and celebrate my amazing good fortune. As it was, I just skipped a little towards the long table they were all arranged around and start carrying them out of the building in twos.

Before I can get more than four outside, though, the pink-haired, pink-skinned girl I saw before the Exams began comes crashing through the wall like- well, like I do, the otherwise sturdy material just kind of not being so sturdy anymore. Her Quirk? It looks like she dissolved it, so some kind of disintegration, maybe, or acid. I immediately drop my prizes and start drawing on bad luck, ready to defend myself should she decide to take this treasure trove for herself.

"There's enough for both of us here, right?" she says instead, and smiles dazzlingly at me. She then scoops up two of the smaller mannequins and dashes back out of her hole in the wall.

I purse my lips, but agree. There are a limited number of 'people' to rescue, true, but the real limiting factor is time – and I'd lose way too much of that if I started a fight over this. I pick the targets back up and make my way back out of the slowly falling building, dropping them just gently enough on the street that nothing important in them breaks.

Then, when I return, it happens. The second floor of the restaurant starts to fall, and I'm faced with a dilemma I never thought could be real.

There are still six of the mannequins seated around the table, and my competitor is halfway out of the building, two thrown awkwardly over her back. There's no time – the support beams have already begun collapsing, and any moment now the entire building will fall like the proverbial big, bad wolf had huffed and puffed and blown it all away. I can feel it, my luck sense warning me of improbable things getting louder and louder. It's finally going to collapse, and I only have enough time to fire one blast of luck.

I can protect the mannequins, or I can protect the other hero.

I'd like to think that, given some time to think, I would always do the right thing. That I can only achieve my atonement through unfailing righteous action, and that Exams don't really matter when someone's health and safety are on the line. That something like points and accomplishments are meaningless. That people's lives have meaning. That I would always choose the latter over the former, because that's what heroism, real heroism, is.

But I am who I am, and there's nothing I want more in this world than to be a hero and make Nemuri proud, and I need to pass this Exam to accomplish that.

In that split-second moment before the roof came down, I acted entirely on instinct and fired a bolt of good luck at the roof-

-directly over the table of mannequins.

There's a scream, and I see the pink-skinned girl on the ground, her t-shirt torn and her legs caught beneath a four-meter slice of wall. Her alien eyes look dazed but she tries to crawl forward anyway, those same eyes clearing as a gasp of agony escapes her. Maybe she's just awkwardly pinned – but, no, her legs are broken. I recognized the tell-tale sound.

Then, she looks up. She sees me.

She whispers, "Help."

I turn away and run to the obliterated birthday table. All the falling rubble had missed the mannequins, as if by magic, but the ground is now a maze of plaster, wood, and random detritus. It takes some shimmying, but I'm able to climb over a makeshift pyramid and pull the fake people from the fake wreckage, like the fake hero I am.

And then I do it again, and again. And again. The third time I return, there are no longer any targets by the broken table, but there are still two by the hero with the broken legs. I step around the fallen pillar that obscured me from her sight, walk over to her on slow, but steady legs, and kneel before her.

Her eyes are wide. I don't look into them when I pull free the only one of her mannequins that survived the collapse.

"You... you bitch," she says, almost incredulously. Her voice wavers, but not with anger or fury – it can only be pure, unfiltered disbelief. Like this, all of this, is just so far out of her world view, that she can't parse it like a rational human being. "You could've saved me, couldn't you."

It's not a question, so I don't answer it as if it were.

"Hey! Come back here!" she shrieks when I walk away, prize in hand. "Don't you dare turn your back on me! Look at what you've done!"

I still hear her long after I've carried all thirteen rescued targets to the rendezvous, but by that point, I'm pretty sure I'm hallucinating her screams.

Do I feel guilty? Terribly. I feel like scum, trash, the worst of the worst. I feel like a villain. I don't regret it, though. I made a promise when I first started really waking up in this world, and I redoubled it when Miss Nemuri found me. I would become a hero, and I would reach atonement, and I would make my mother proud. I would be worthy of a family. Being accepted into U.A. is a vital milestone on that path. That girl... she was an obstacle on that path.

It's not like I hurt her. I just... didn't go out of my way to save her. She would have gotten pinned under that fragment of wall whether I was there to profit on her immobility or not. I'm innocent. I did nothing wrong.

"Is the restaurant clear?" Mika calls from the back of Dark Shadow.

I wave a hand in vague acceptance, and point at the factory I wasn't able to scale.

We both got back to work, and yet...

I couldn't shake the feeling that I had just made a grave mistake.

.

…

.

I have made a grave mistake.

"Mana!" I hear Mika shout, voice uncharacteristically panicked. "Get back here, quick!"

I dive out the hole in the wall, tucking my head and rolling under a falling support beam. I was only five seconds away from the source of the agonized moans, but if my partner is panicking than the problem must be so much more important than a single missed point.

Then I look up, and I wish I stayed in the dissolving warehouse. It was less dangerous in there.

The giant war machine that single-handedly scattered all fifty hero applicants assigned to Battle Center D? It's staring Mika down and preparing to drop a dozen tons of heavy metal on our pile of fake rescued civilians. In a single smash, our point total will be reset to zero and all of our hard work will be for nothing. The time has to be almost up – we won't be able to place in the top forty if we lose those points. We might not place at all.

Mika's Dark Shadow is rearing back and ready to deflect the blow, but something has clearly weakened it, and it'll be little better than a cloud before a lightning strike. That is... unless it gets really lucky.

It's a shame I'm all out of good luck.

My battery of bad luck is only a quarter full, but I take half of that and make the biggest ball of writhing, malevolent negative energies I've made since I detonated that gas main under Corkscrew five weeks ago. I take it in my hand, and I focus it all on making that bastard short-circuit, and I hurl it overhand at the war machine threatening all of Mika's and my hard work.

It catches the monster in the chest. The big, green, ugly thing smokes and whirs and crackles with electricity, and it starts to tip over, looking ready to fall on top of Mika and our mannequins anyway.

Dark Shadow bolts forward at a hissed command from its master, and it pushes the war machine just off-balance enough that it tilts and starts to fall backward instead-

Until the horror of modern technology re-stabilizes by dropping to a knee, numberless redundancies kicking in and taking over for blown systems, and it turns its eight-eyed glare on me.

I'm standing by Mika, no memory of how I got there, staring at the mammoth in shock. I knew my assault wouldn't destroy the damn thing – if I could manage such a feat so easily, it wouldn't have scattered all of us at the start of these exhausting Exams – but I didn't think it would shrug off an eighth of my Quirk's potential in two fucking seconds.

"We have no choice," Mika murmurs quickly, red eyes glaring. He pulls Dark Shadow in close and I can see the creature swell in size and fury, as if its power rose in lockstep with its masters negative emotions. Maybe it does. "We must stall until the Exams end."

"I've almost exhausted my Quirk," I answer hurriedly. The war machine is nearly back to its feet, we don't have much time. "If I run out, my luck will turn sour, and I'll be screwed."

He takes a deep breath. "Do what you can. I'll extract you."

"I trust you."

The war machine – I name it Goliath – takes a step forward and raises its herculean arm, readying a hammer-strike that will pulp us like so much cardboard, and I know that we're out of time.

What happens next is almost too quick to process.

I charge all of my remaining bad luck into my hand, sprinting forward in the hopes that if I could only pump it directly into the Goliath's leg, I could make that titan fall.

The Goliath predicts my attack and immediately drops back down to a knee, the tons of falling metal crashing against me and knocking me on my ass.

I lose control of the black karma wreathing my hand, and it spills out into the world around me, souring my future by spiking the odds of every bad thing that could happen to me in the immediate future.

The war machine rears back a blocky metal fist and rotates to bury it in my everything with maximum force.

Dark Shadow is too far away.

And the pink-skinned girl I shunned comes to my rescue, a plume of neon liquid smacking into my side with enough force to skip me across the pavement like a slinky – and right out of the Goliath's way. Its arm smashes into the earth where I just was with a sickening _thud._

Then, rain falls from the sky. Helicopters, three of them, pouring metric tons of water on the fires in Battle Center D.

 _"Time's up. Report to the front gate whenever. If you're crippled, try not to bleed out until Recovery Girl gets to you,"_ the same asshole from before drawls into the Battle Center-wide intercom. _"Or scream, that works too."_

I certainly feel like screaming. I don't, though; I just stumble to my feet and look for my savior. I find her right outside the restaurant I abandoned her in, lying on the ground, having melted her way through the debris and army-crawled out.

She looks at me, and I find that I can't meet her eyes.

"I am so sorry, Mana," Mika says, rushing over to me. He sighs, looking rather less put-together than he usually does. "You had me worried, for a moment. I'm glad that girl was there."

"...Yeah, me too." I look up at the rain, then back into Mika's kind red eyes. Something crystallizes inside of me. I'm not quite sure what it is yet, but... "Hey, I need to go tell the- the guy with the intercom something, real quick. Do you know where he might be?"

He blinks at me, but shakes his head. "No, but if I were a betting man, I'd guess that he's by the bus or the gate. That keeps him safely out of city limits while still being able to meet up with everyone, after."

"Thanks," I say simply, and start running.

.

…

.

It takes me five minutes to reach the gate.

It feels like longer.

.

…

.

I find him leaning against the giant gate we entered the Battle Center through, looking into a tablet computer with narrowed eyebrows.

I recognize him immediately, of course. Miss Nemuri has a picture of him on the wall of her bedroom, next to all of her other close friends. Eraserhead. Aizawa Shota. The man who taught her that heroism is about the people you save, and not the fame you acquire in the process.

That I have to talk to him about this, it's almost enough to make me turn back right then and there. Almost, but not quite.

He looks up at me and sighs. I feel like I can taste his apathy on his breath, despite the scarf over his face. "You do realize that U.A. has never had a student casualty during the Entrance Exams, and that this year wasn't going to be any different? I assure you, this test wasn't as unsupervised as it seemed."

"It's not about that," I say, and he quirks an eyebrow. It takes me a moment to explain. I think of some words, chew on them, almost give voice to them, but none of them seem right. Ultimately, I just tear down my filter and run my mouth, a specialty of mine. "You saw, right? On the cameras."

"Saw what," he drawls. He looks about as interested as the cat I had, thirteen years and a brutal murder ago. I've never wanted to punch someone more in my life.

"The girl with the pink skin and hair," I say instead, because, really, that's what this is all about. I need to stop thinking about myself for once in my God-damned life. Lives. "Did she pass?"

He rolls his eyes at me. My fists clench, white-knuckled. "All test results will be posted at the end of the week-"

"I disqualify myself."

He pushes himself off the wall, the first flicker of surprise coming to life in his dark eyes. "What?"

"I've dedicated my entire life to becoming a hero, thinking-" I close my mouth. Saying this, it makes me feel so pathetic. Makes it all feel so real. "Thinking it will make me worth something."

I don't say this to be pitied, or empathized with. I don't say this in the selfish hope that it will make him take leniency on me. I say this because I know it is exactly the kind of selfish ambition that will disgust him, that will make him boot me from the hero program and let the pink-haired hero take my place.

"A second before the building collapsed and broke that girl's legs, I used my Quirk to save the mannequins. I could've rescued her instead, it would've been so easy, but I chose my own success in these stupid exams over her health and safety. Even after, I could've pulled her from the wreckage to make sure you all saw her, but I didn't want the competition so I didn't."

"And then she helped you," he says.

"And then she helped me," I echo. "I wasn't in mortal danger, but I would've been hurt just as badly as she was, if not worse. I would've deserved it, too. All she had to do was look away like I did. Yet, she didn't."

"Do you know why?" he asks. There's no condemnation in his tone, just simple curiosity.

"In my head, yeah, I do. That's what heroism is, right? Your head screams at you to save yourself, but your heart and your body disobeys it to save other people, instead. That's what Miss Nemuri tried to tell me, I think." I swallow thickly. "And, for the first time in my life, I was put in that situation. And my head, heart, and body were in accordance. I chose to save myself."

"That's it?"

"I'm not fit to be a hero. She is. Please. Give her my points, all of them, even if she doesn't need them. I can't be a hero, I tried but I just don't have it in me. Please."

He hums, leaning back against the wall. "People frequently do things they otherwise wouldn't, when adrenaline pounds in their veins. You're not thinking straight, right now. I'll tell Nemuri to give you my number. I'll do as you say and give your points to Ashido, but if any time between now and next week you change your mind, tell me, okay? I'll give you the points back. You got enough to pass in the top twenty, I'm sure. No one has to know. You don't even have to call me – a simple text will do."

"Why?" I ask, voice quiet. "I don't understand. Why would you let me into class 1-A?"

"Ashido has heart, but she still lost a fight with an empty building. Nemuri told you all about me, I'm sure. I'm not going to let someone with no heroic potential into U.A., heart or no, because I refuse to be party to manslaughter."

"She'll surprise you."

"She'll only get the chance if you surprise me and stick to this little gambit of yours," he counters, and I seethe. "Run off now, kid. I have to get back to work."

.

…

.

I make my way back to Mika, the deactivated Goliath, and our pile of useless fucking mannequins. There, I thank my raven-headed partner for his help, congratulate him on his nearly-assured success, and very carefully remain out of the girl's – Miss Ashido's – line of sight. If Mika notices my preoccupation, he doesn't mention it. He's tactful and shit like that.

Recovery Girl eventually finds us, her arm around a support hero I only dimly recognize: Moebius. His Quirk has something to do with spatial folding, I think. It looks more like teleportation to me, but what do I know? I'm just an innocent little girl.

The infamous heroine clucks at us for a couple seconds, heals our burns and scrapes – wounds I completely forgot I had – then casually strolls over to Miss Ashido. I don't know if she's just naturally callous, more tired and frail than she looks, or suffering from a case of physician burnout sixty years in the making. It doesn't really matter, I suppose.

With nothing left to do, Mika and I head back towards the gate. He gives me his phone number, and I smile and resolve to never use it. It's not like I'm going to see him again. If I still end up attending U.A., it'll be in the support course. More likely, I'll be going back to the orphanage and will attend a local high school.

Then I see Miss Nemuri waiting for me, looking excited and proud and worried and even more proud, and I realize that no one's told her yet that I disqualified myself from the program. I don't think I'll be able to. I already feel worse for disappointing her than I did for abandoning Miss Ashido and giving up on heroism combined, and I haven't even looked her in the eyes yet.

The next six days pass like six years.

.

…

.

The seventh day passes like sand between my fingers, until I finally call the infuriating hero.

"Aizawa," he drawls, and the urge to punch him comes so quickly, so strongly, I have to steady myself on the wall of my bedroom.

"You smug asshole," I curse, looking at the torn envelope in my hands – my pale, shaking hands, clenched white with the strength of my pent-up passion. "What is this?"

"Do you curse like that around your Miss Nemuri?"

"Answer my fucking questions," I curse again, my old accent slurring my words like the drunken gambler I used to be. I haven't spoken like this since before I died. The words flow like water. "Seventh place? _Seventh place?_ How the fuck did I rank in the top ten when I have zero points?"

"Well, you don't have zero points, Miss Manami." Fucker sounds amused. "You have eighty-one points."

 _"Don't fuck with me."_

Aizawa sighs. "I'm only going to tell you once, so listen well, okay? This is important."

I seethe.

"Some people are like All Might or Ashido, in that they're born heroes. Doing the right thing comes naturally to them. Maybe it's in their nature, maybe it's in their upbringing, maybe it's just a kind of moral fiber that God only gives out to his favorite children – I don't know, I'm not a philosopher. But it's not something everyone has, and despite what All Might will tell you, it is entirely possible to be a hero without it."

"Bullshit."

"Don't interrupt me," he states calmly, and my mouth shuts with a click. "Heroism is a lifestyle, and like all lifestyles it is dependent on a certain way of thinking, a certain state of mind. And, that? That can be taught. That can be learned. If all heroes have to be born with that selflessness inherent in their psyche, then there wouldn't be a lot of heroes around. I know I wouldn't be one."

"...You're serious."

"Dead serious," he affirms. "Don't misunderstand me: it will be hard. It will be very, very hard. But it can be done. It has been done before, and it will most certainly be done again, regardless of what you choose now. Despite what I just said, don't worry about other people right now. Think, Manami – do you want to be a hero? Do you want to be that kind of person?"

His words strike me like a physical blow. "...More than... anything."

"If I ever hear you give up on that dream like you did last week, I will personally strangle you in your sleep."

I huff a weak laugh. "I'm holding you to it, Mister Eraserhead."

 _"Now she idolizes me as much as she does Nemuri. What an annoyance,"_ he murmurs under his breath. I smile. "None of that, kid. Now go eat ice cream or something, I have to go."

"I'm sorry for calling you an asshole, Eraserhead, sir."

"Ugh." He hangs up. A moment later, I get a text: _"She scored 19_ _th_ _."_

My smile widens. I'm barely holding myself up against a wall, I'm dressed in yesterday's pajamas, my purple-black hair could rival Mika's everything and I'm beaming at the floor with tears in my eyes like God himself just told me my life has meaning. I feel ridiculous, and I laugh.

A few minutes later, I've showered, brushed my hair, put on a fresh change of clothes and left to find Miss Nemuri. I find her with Thirteen and a hero I don't recognize in the living room I became her sidekick in, and I look down at the floor awkwardly, poking at the carpet with my toe.

"Manami?" she asks, interrupting her own story to turn and blink at me. "What's up?"

I very carefully don't look at the other two heroes. This isn't a conversation I want them to hear. I don't want Miss Nemuri to hear it, either, but... after what Mister Aizawa said... "Can I talk to you in private, for a moment?"

"Yes- of course." She gives her apologies to Thirteen and the gray-haired hero with the x-shaped scar, and follows me to her office – the one she adopted me in. She immediately catches on to the nature of the conversation. "What's wrong, Manami? Is everything all right?"

I smile at her, sitting down on the desk – my favorite spot in the entirety of Siren Place. I could use the comfort of familiarity, right now. "I passed. Rank seven."

"Of course you did!" She immediately pulls me into a crushing hug.

I carefully extricate myself from her warmth so I can look her in the eyes. This is fucking important. "I tried to disqualify myself."

She stills.

After Mister Aizawa hung up, before I stepped into the shower, I realized a few things. The most glaring was that, if the heroic way of thinking can be taught, then I'll be damned if I don't learn it. I want to be that kind of person, like Mister Aizawa said I could be. Like Miss Nemuri said I could be.

This past week, I didn't tell my adoptive mother about the Miss Ashido debacle. I told her everything else, and even went on to praise the pink-skinned hero at length for pushing me out of the way of the giant robot's attack – so much so that she teasingly asked me if I had a crush. Which I don't. That would be ridiculous.

But I just didn't have it in me to crush her motherly fondness for me, her respect for me by telling her I prioritized my own success in the exam over another hero's health and safety to the point that I turned away when a building fell on her. I couldn't do that. I just couldn't. That she might not look at me so warmly anymore, that she might not hug me anymore or care for me so strongly anymore, I couldn't bear the thought. So I didn't mention it, and every day it got harder and harder to look away from Mister Aizawa's contact in my phone. I wanted desperately to text him like he said I could, to take my desperate plea back so Miss Nemuri – so Mother – never has to know what I did, and I could become a hero like she so enthusiastically wanted me to.

Several times, I clicked on that contact. Once, I even typed in the message. I never pressed 'send,' though. I'll be forever proud of that much. Even I can do that much, right?

It struck me, just then, that I cared about being the daughter that Miss Nemuri wanted more than I cared about absolving myself of the sins of my past life. And that's why I have to do this. I have to stop selfishly prioritizing myself like this. The thinking that led to me lying to Miss Nemuri by omission because it'd be easier for me is the same thinking that led to me turning away when that building collapsed on Miss Ashido. I need to cut that shit out, and quick.

Mister Aizawa said that changing my way of thinking would be hard. I've never heard truer words in my life.

"I mentioned that Miss Ashido's legs were broken, when she used her Quirk to push me out of the way," I tell her, and her eyes widen. "What I didn't say was that I was there when her legs broke. The building fell, and I chose to save the six target mannequins over her." I hiccup, and tears shine in my yellow eyes. "I wanted to pass the stupid test more than I wanted to stop a real hero from getting hurt. So I... I looked away, and I ignored her pleas for help, I..."

The whole story comes out – the encounter in the fake restaurant, the way she called me out on my atrocious behavior, the way I ignored her, and the way she saved me from injury anyway, because she's a hero and that's what heroes do. I told her about running to Mister Aizawa and disqualifying myself, begging that my points be given to her. I told her about Mister Aizawa telling me that a single text anytime in the next week will make him give me the points back.

"I- I get it now. He was testing my resolve. I don't have that heroic instinct, but he told me today that it can be changed, if only, if only I try hard enough and for long enough, and to do that will require... so much force of will. He wanted to know if I had that willpower, that desire to work at changing my own nature for however long it takes. I... I guess I passed. Eraserhead and his stupid tests..."

Miss Nemuri rests a hand on my cheek. "I won't lie and say that I'm not disappointed." Her words come out calm, but I flinch back anyway. "But I'm proud that you were able to tell me all of this, that you're working to change and be a better person. I'll still be there for you, you know? I'm 'in it' for the long haul. You don't have to be so afraid of me all the time."

"I could never-"

"I know the way you look at me sometimes," she says simply. "Chin up, okay? All will be well. I know that you will be a hero in the end. Put a little faith in yourself. You're not as bad a person as you think."

"I'm, I'm trying, Miss Nemuri... It's, it's just-"

"Listen, Manami. Don't believe in yourself."

She says this in the same calm fucking tone, and I look up at her, eyes wide in shock. Did she just...?

"Believe in me!" she suddenly shouts. "Believe in the Midnight who believes in you!"

There's a moment of shocked silence.

I break it with a strangled scream.

"You can't do that to me!" I hiss at her, grabbing at the hem of her shirt. "We were having a dramatic conversation!"

"Aah," she affirms, small smile on her pretty face. "But the dramatic conversation was over, you know? Don't be such a downer all the time, Manami. It's okay to be happy. You'll find whatever it is you're looking for eventually, sweetheart, I know you will. In the meanwhile... it's okay to enjoy yourself. You don't need to be so hard on yourself, all the time. I believe in you. So believe in yourself, too, okay?"

I look up at her, entranced by the sunlight playing on her hair, by the softness of her hand on my cheek, by the warmth in her eyes. I told myself, when this moment came, that I would probably run away because I don't know how to handle this level of trust and affection. I still don't, really, but... I couldn't move from this spot if meteors fell from the sky.

I've spent my entire life thinking that I needed to reach some arbitrary level of atonement, that I needed to balance the karma managed by my Quirk to be worthy of love, of family. In this moment, I couldn't care less about any of that. All I cared about was that I loved this woman like the mother I've always wanted, and even if she doesn't feel the same way for me, nothing will stop me from listening to her words and hiding them away inside of my heart until the end of time. She could tell me whatever she wants and I will cherish those words like they came from the lips of a holy prophet. She holds my soul in her hands.

She kisses my forehead. "Call that boy you mentioned so much, Manami. Fumikage, right? I'll give him the scary shovel talk, you'll go to a theater or a park or something, and heroes and luck and whatever won't be on your mind at all. Just be a kid for a little and don't worry about any of that. Mother's orders."

"Okay."

What else was there to say?


End file.
